Inspirational Speaker. Corporate Comedian. Backcountry Adherent.

Rethinking Man’s #1 Ranking on the Food Chain

I heard on the radio the other day that man is still ranked number one on the food chain. Well shucks, of course we’re number one, we do the voting.

Does anyone believe we’d enjoy such a lofty ranking if other species had a vote? There’s zero chance a grizzly bear would defer to us? It would be thinking, “Man? Number one? The species that can be chased into a lake by a single bee? The species that feigns death if we approach it? Maybe number one on the food chain with the use of props. But take away its guns and pepper spray and humans are helpless buffoons. ”

Helpless buffoons, indeed.

Our egos, however, won’t allow us to admit our buffoonery. Or at least concede there should be an asterisk next to our ranking. We’re too full of ourselves. We’re convinced we’re the planet’s shining species, preventing us from recognizing our idiocy.

Take, for example, a beached whale. Less than 95% of us know to administer CPR to a fellow human being. Yet all of us are experts on determining a beached whale needs to be pushed back to sea.

How do we know this? The closest most of us have come to attending to an aquatic creature is feeding Tetra flakes to a goldfish. Yet we, with limited knowledge of whales, are rock-certain it needs to be shoved back into the ocean? Can we be any more delusional?

Have we ever considered that maybe we’re preventing the whale’s evolutionary path into becoming an amphibian? Or possibly even that it’s come to tell us something important? Like running with scissors is dangerous.

We’re idiots. Need more proof? Here are three more examples:

The monarch butterfly has the brain size of a pin. Yet it can migrate thousands of miles south to find an exact location in Mexico’s Sierra Madre Mountains. We drive two miles from our homes and we require GPS to find a Taco Bell.

Every fall most species do things that border on miraculous. Birds migrate. Bears hibernate. Elk grow antlers. Humans? We spend $5 billion annually on Halloween decorations to make our expensive homes look abandoned.

Every Arbor Day we plant a tree and every Christmas we kill a tree.

Do you have additional proof of our idiocy? Or thoughts on where we should honestly rank on the food chain? Please share with words or photos. The funnier the better.